Brittany’s Pick

Growing up in an Italian family, I have always loved biscotti, especially dunking them in endless cups of coffee. My favorite cookbook that I have found to date is Ciao Biscotti by Domenica Marchetti. This book includes both sweet and savory versions of biscotti. With over 30 varieties including stracciatella, fig and fennel and crispy pancetta, you can channel your food cravings into a biscotti cookie! My two favorite to try out are the chocolate-studded (page 58) and cappuccino dunkers (page 90). At the end of the book you can find recipes for other Italian cookies like hazelnut butter rings and nutella sandwich cookies!

Barbara’s Pick

Being vegan doesn’t stop me from indulging in delicious mac-and-cheese. One of my favorite recipes is called “Mac N Cheez” from Mayim’s Vegan Table: More Than 100 Great-tasting and Healthy Recipes from My Family to Yours by Mayim Bialik. Without using any dairy, you can create a delicious bowl of macaroni and cheese in no time…perfect for chilly nights!

Amy’s Pick

I would highly recommend this book to individuals new to home canning. The introduction has great illustrations of the hot water bath process. As a first time jam maker with a small kitchen, I appreciated Marisa’s recipes being designed for small batches. I tried two recipes from the book: Apple Cranberry Jam and Cantaloupe Jam with Vanilla. Both were delicious but the apple cranberry turned out the best. The natural pectin in both fruits made it easy to get the jam to set. The cantaloupe jam called for liquid pectin, which I had not used before. The consistency was thinner than I expected but it still tasted great!

Alea’s Pick

Fairy Tale Feasts provides 25 delectable recipes for breakfasts, lunches, soups, dinners, and desserts. Included with each of the recipes, or groups of recipes in some cases, is the fairy tale that inspired it and marginalia, which provides contextual or historical information on why the tales unfold the way they do. Voracious readers will get a kick out of reading from cover to cover to experience both the fairy tale and the corresponding recipe, but the book is incredibly easy to navigate for those just aching for the recipe to a great eat.

Flipping through, many of the recipes included in this book sounded delicious (goat cheese sandwiches or sweet chocolate mousse, anyone?) and surprisingly, there were items included in it that I have never tried before, but I ultimately decided to try my hand at one of the recipes which called for items I already had laying around the house: eggs in a cradle.

As I followed along, I found that the instructions provided by Stemple were friendly, conversational in tone, and easy to follow, making it an ideal cookbook for young readers to use as a cooking primer. They will still need supervision, particularly when it comes time to start using the stove, but they will take great pride in being able to understand and carry out the steps almost entirely on their own. To make the experience even more fun, Stemple included in the sidebars of the recipe pages a few fun facts that young readers will delight in sharing. Did you know, for instance, that brown eggs cost more to buy because brown egg layers are larger than white egg layers, and require more food to keep?

Before I knew it, my simple meal was ready to serve and it wasn’t much longer after that before it was devoured in its entirety. Thanks to the ease and joy with which the book can be used and the minimal effort required to come away with a truly tasty meal, I look forward to sampling my way through the rest of this book. Check it out, and more, at the library!